Stewards/Elections 2021/Questions

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The 2021 steward elections are finished. No further votes will be accepted.

Eligible voters (see application guidelines) can ask questions to all candidates on this page. Please post no more than 2 relevant questions per candidate (in total; ie. all questions a candidate needs to answer are counted), and keep them as concise and relevant as possible. Candidates, please answer as briefly and simply as possible.

For all candidates[edit]

Oversight[edit]

I want to ask a general question because the right with the fewest users on all Wikimedia sites is oversighters. As far as I can see, it is one of the least used rights for temporay permission among the stewards per logs. Some candidates may not have experienced this right. We assume on your home wikis that you see a serious smear/libelous against an important politician in your country. What would you do at that moment, would you follow what ways? Regards. --Uncitoyentalk 00:04, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you for the question. I can't act as steward in my home wiki. Moreover, ptwiki (my home wiki) have a local (and fast) oversighter team so I would only do an oversight there in a really, really, emergency situation and if no one other steward is arround. However, I don't think oversight is a permission rarely used by the stewards, they constantly use it to remove PII in most cases. But serious libelous, mainly in articles/content pages, is hard to identify if you don't know satisfactorily the language, so in this cases (except portuguese, for me) the help of other steward that speak the language is essential. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 02:36, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    According to the user rights logs, the stewards' appointment themselves as a temporary oversighter in the last 1.5 months is almost half of their appointment as a temporary checkuser. So I said less for this right. Apart from that, it is a right that is frequently used for emergencies issues. Thank you for your answer. --Uncitoyentalk 07:27, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am a local oversighter on my homewiki, so if I saw a libelous claim, I would proceed to oversight it, just as I normally would. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:26, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello, Uncitoyen! Concerning that I should avoid using Stewards' tools in my homewiki, I would report the revision to local oversighters. As you asked "what ways", I assume you are asking me to be thorought on that answer. So I would look for the account "Supressor" at pt.wiki, which is a role account that I proposed in 2013 to be used to place oversight requests by e-mail. When you send a mail to that account, it goes to ptwiki oversighters' mailing list. So, I would send them an email and let them do their job; and they usually do pretty fine. Depending on the case (and in that case I would do it), I can also revdelete the revision to hide it from the public while oversighters are not available, so they can oversight it later.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 01:49, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I noted in response to question 6 about homewikis, I identify a fair number of wikis as my "home wikis". Outside of Wikidata, where I am a local Oversighter and could handle the situation as needed, I would defer to either the local oversight team, if there is one, or other stewards, if not. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Simple English Wikipedia is fortunate enough to have responsive group of Oversighters. If I should find libelous content there, I would notify them the same way I currently do: via their email list. There is a local policy, however, which grants Stewards permission to perform emergency actions if the team doesn't act within 15 minutes. In this case, I would reach out to my fellow Stewards for assistance. Operator873talkconnect 22:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speaking of SqWiki, in the past there have been some cases when different IP users (sometimes even registered ones) have vandalized different articles with totally unrelated information which consisted of personal attacks towards what one must assume to be their acquaintances in real life. Being an admin and specifically sensitive to the topic of cyberbullying, I've used RevDeletion for some of those cases. The closest situation I've found myself involved with the above case. SqWiki is a small wiki, we don't have an oversighter on our own, so on that case I would refer the situation to another Steward. Generally speaking though, as I've specified on my small presentation text, I'd tend to avoid involvement in situations like these if it wasn't absolutely necessary, choosing to focus more instead on the technical side of global community. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:02, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • My home wiki is the English Wikipedia and would fall under the Meta Avoids conflicts of interest policy where there are numerous other stewards whose home wiki is not English Wikipedia and despite that there are already dozens of local oversighters that could handle such a request promptly. --Charitwo (talk) 05:01, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • My homewiki is the Dutch Wikipedia, which has no local oversight user group. This means a request should de deferred to the other stewards. What I can do in such cases is using RevDel as administrator to hide them from public view, something I already have been doing for any request involving my homewiki. In the case of Wikidata, which I could see as my second homewiki, I would contact oversight(_AT_)wikidata.org. In emergencies when none of the five oversighters are available I would refer to other stewards. --Wiki13 (talk) 19:56, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd use the buttons if I'm a local oversighter (as I do on enwiki), otherwise globally it's used when there aren't any local ones. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To oversight false vanishing[edit]

I would like to kindly ask all candidates about any users who vanish but still condemn anyone. In case of no local oversighters, how would they respond as stewards?--Jusjih (talk) 04:35, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you for the question. First, this is a bad use of right to vanish (vanish = leave permanetly) and by behavior, consequently, a violation of global rename policy (see item #3). In case of no local oversighters, I will process the request if I can confirm that it fits one of the four uses, probably #2 but, again, language skills may be necessary. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 15:34, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • There really isn't a question here, but a request to comment on your RfC. If you are asking how I would handle a vanishing rename request, I'll start by saying I most likely wouldn't, we have global renamers for that. You also suggest that there are no local oversighters which makes me think the username should be oversighted also. If the username should be oversighted to begin with, it's not going to be a vanishing user. If you are talking about local userpages created by the users, then any deletions would have to occur inline with the Oversight policy, regardless of the right to vanish. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:33, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. To be clearer, I am asking about local userpages created by the users, not when to rename nor oversight any username.--Jusjih (talk) 23:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, Jusjih. I will try to answer, but I am not sure if I get your question. Please, tell me if I don't answer it. Right to vanish is a grey area when it comes to global rules. I know it's routine in English Wikipedia and perhaps any other I am not aware, but that's far from being consensual globally speaking. So, it is hard to say what I would do without a proper example, and that's only my opinion anyway as there is no clear rule. I would probably try to find some consensus to that specific case or request global renamers help. Right to vanish is usually something made to those users that leave the project in good standing. If I get your question, an user that uses their userpage to attack anyone do not have the right to vanish to begin with, as they are not leaving in good standing.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 02:12, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't really understand what you're asking here. If this is about potentially oversighting user pages, whether a user has requested to "vanish" or not does not, to me, matter much in deciding whether the page qualifies for oversight or not, and I would process it as with any other oversight request --DannyS712 (talk) 03:03, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you consider this question in the simplest of terms, the question is essentially would you oversight content on a wiki where there are no Oversighters and the content meets the criteria for oversighting? In that case, yes, I would in accordance with local and global policy. To be clear, the content in question would need to meet the already established criteria. Operator873talkconnect 22:27, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The vanishing is irrelevant to the criteria for oversight. If it's in violation, and there are no local oversighters, the content would be dealt with according to policy. --Charitwo (talk) 05:02, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think (courtesy) vanishing is not relevant when determining if content should be oversighted. If it's in violation then it should be dealt with according with policy. --Wiki13 (talk) 20:09, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure what is meant by 'condemn', but generally userpages are suppressed if they contain private information or contain libel etc. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Coronavirus[edit]

Please briefly explain if, and how, the coronavirus situation affected your Wikimedia work last year, and whether you expect it to have an impact this year (as the situation is still highly dynamic), taking into account the fact that it can equally be better or worse than before. There is no need to reveal personal details; being general is enough. Leaderboard (talk) 08:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you for the question. I spent more time at home, so my availability was great in the last year. However, the routine is a little crazy, so there is a certain irregularity, some days very busy, others very free. If the situation becomes better maybe a little reduction in availability but a better regularity, if get worse, I really don't know. But I don't believe this year will be very different from 2020 for me. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 16:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally already work from home, so that brought no change about my employment. I felt like last year was pretty much a normal year of contributing for me, minus the month of August that was unrelated to COVID and was a personal issue. I don't expect there to be any major change in my activity level, increasing or decreasing. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:35, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaderboard, hello! Wow... that's a tough one. This pandemic hit me in many ways. I work as a doctor in emergency room and at intensive care unit. In both of them, I treat patients with COVID. Some patients are friends. Others are friends of friends, or even family members. At least, none of them was a wikimedian. So, trying to be concise, this year I had to study more and work with something completely new to everyone. It was a mental challenge and I had to deal with frustration many times. It's been stressful to say the least and I didn't always keep the willingness to stay as a volunteer as we know it may lead to another load of stress. Just to bring an example, I don't watch the news for more than 10 months in order to avoid anything else that can be potentially stressful. I am not sure if it is the best reaction, but it seems to be working so far. I am happy the things seems to be getting better lately. Even when I got COVID myself in October, I could use it to work some more at Wikimedia projects. I still get to use it as a hobby I can try to relax and feel productive. In a nutshell, there were times I was so overburden with all that that I couldn't find the strength to use it as a volunteer. There were other times that I could use the volunteer work to find some strength and try to think in other positive things. For that year, I honestly hope things will get slowly better, but I am also feel more prepared to face it. Sorry if that was too long.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 02:39, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It has given me a bit more time to spend online, including on wiki-related activities --DannyS712 (talk) 03:04, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't feel like the pandemic has impacted my Wikipedia activities very much at all. The outlook on my presence on Wikipedia is just as, if not much more, active as before. Contributing to this is the fact that I'm fortunate enough to work from home. Operator873talkconnect 22:33, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I usually hold many physical wiki workshops and edit-a-thones on my home country throughout the year as part of my normal wiki routine. This part was greatly affected as everything else physical. Other than that, the virtual part didn't change. I wasn't currently engaged in a job when the pandemic started so the online time was more or less the same. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:11, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's affected my work in a positive way. In fact, I've found more time to spend on Wikimedia having worked from home since March 2020 due to the global pandemic. I see myself with ample time to help fellow stewards keeping the queues clear. --Charitwo (talk) 05:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think the virus has had much impact to me personally. My activity level is the same if not a bit higher than before. --Wiki13 (talk) 20:15, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I spent much time online and it's the same now... ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Decision[edit]

Although stewards are usually ones who implement existing consensus, in rare cases they have rights to invalidate consensus. In some cases, you are the one to make decision, especially if there are no other users commenting.

  1. Assuming someone got desysoped for (possible) misuse of sysop right. Some times later the user requests adminship again with an apparant local consensus. In which circumstances will you invalidate it? See Steward_requests/Permissions/2020-06#User_HitomiAkane@arz.wikipedia for a real case, and you can imagine that this user is now requesting adminship again.
  2. Global IP block exemptions requests often have no comment and need to be closed by stewards. If someone is active in some wiki (and have good track record on), but indefinitely blocked in another wiki for behavior issue, will you still accept the requests (if they provided a genuine need)? What about users with recent indefinite block record?
  3. Global locks#Reasons to request a global lock specifies that "Accounts that have violated other principles which are grounds for indefinite blocks on multiple individual wikis" are eligible for global locks. Do you believed that most of such accounts should be global locked? Or they should be locked only if there are evidences that issues may not be sufficiently handled by local produces? Also in which case you will suggest a formal global ban instead?

--GZWDer (talk) 08:56, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@GZWDer: Hello, Election Committee has received complaints that this question is actually three questions (three things to answer, hence three question) and decided that this is in violation of two questions rule. Please trim your question to 2. Thank you. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 18:29, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Dropped question 2.--GZWDer (talk) 19:42, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would only consider invalidating local consensus after a discussion with the rest of the team and a clear indication that giving the userrights could result in a policy violation by the user, especially if it is a global policy. As far as locks, I don't believe that a certain amount of local blocks should equal a lock. The reasons for a lock are on the Global locks page. Someone for example could not be fluent in multiple languages but try contributing to those wikis and be blocked. If they are contributing positively to one wiki, this wouldn't need a lock necessarily. Local procedures do not come into affect about a lock, the key has to be disruption across multiple wikis. I would not recommend a global ban in any case, but I would point to it as a possibility in some rare cases where there is obvious crosswiki disruption that can't be handled by a lock. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:46, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • For #1, I would likely defer to other stewards' judgement and not act on the request myself. For #3, I believe that accounts "should" be locked only when it serves the movement to do so (and only when doing so is within relevant policy) and that no specific number of local blocks is needed for a global block. There are some contributors I know that are blocked on multiple projects, but are still able to contribute effectively on others, while some accounts (thinking of LTAs and spambots) don't need any local blocks before a global lock is in order. --DannyS712 (talk) 03:09, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1) Usually, I would only invalidate if there was an indication of fraud (votes of new or inactive accounts, sockpuppetry) or if local requirements (when exist) were not followed (minimum votes, rate of support...). In the example case, I would not accept it because the removal was a collective decision by the stewards for abuse of several users and occurred just 10 days before this new request (which even had the vote of another user involved). A simple request cannot override an entire previous deliberation and investigation. If a new request was placed today (for example), I would talk to other stewards before, because the decision to remove was also collective. 3) "Eligible" is different from "should be". I believe that projects must have autonomy to deal with their own problems and that global actions (locks) should be used when local procedures are insufficient or less effective. I would suggest a global ban when the user has been problematic on several projects but his behavior is not "simple" or uncontroversial to be dealt directly in SRG, following of course the criteria and procedures determined. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 17:04, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the questions. 1) I think it would a very rare event, indeed, that a consensus is invalidated by the Stewards. In such a case, the strength of the Stewards is the diverse backgrounds of the Stewards. Before invalidating a consensus, like in your example, I would seek input from my fellow Stewards. The message communicating such action, if a decision to act was reached, should read "We, the Stewards," and not "I, a Steward". 2) Globally locking an account is a measure that should be a last resort or to enforce previous actions (like Global bans or etc) to protect the global community. The policy is quite clear when an account is subject to being locked. I believe local projects' policy should be allowed to work and permit each project to decide how to proceed. However, if the account in question is rapidly jumping from project to project and evading or not being hampered by local action, a lock becomes the better option. Operator873talkconnect 22:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1) In your example, there is no urgent need to close the request one way or the other before bringing it up with the other stewards. Stewards are a team and it would be prudent to have a discussion before making a decision. When in doubt, getting a second opinion is always a smart thing to do. 2) It would also depend on whether this is an established user versus a throwaway account or IP address. The former is situational and could require discussion especially if it's clear that their intent is not to immediately hop to an unrelated project and cause trouble there too. Just because they have accumulated more than one local block doesn't mean their intent is to accumulate more. The latter clearly needs action taken ASAP to protect the communities at large from further disruption as projects should feel free to foster great content without worrying about LTAs or spambots wreaking havoc. --Charitwo (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GZWDer: thanks for your question. #1: It is always said that 'stewards don't decide' on those matters, but this refers to the fact that they do not decide whether a particular candidate is qualified or not to have certain access, since the local community is the holder of this role. However, they can (and are elected for that) decide whether the 'application' (not the applicant) met all the criteria. For example, they verify if there was no voting fraud, if there was sufficient and widespread disclosure of the vote, if there wasn't any harassment in the voting announcements process that may have had a profound impact on the decision. So, with some sign that the application was heavily influenced by some kind of fraud, I would think about not accepting the application. It is important to make it clear that this would only mean not accepting the application and without making any decision about the candidate. Still, if there is any other unforeseen factor that has influenced the vote and that shows some irregularity, I would take the case to the others to reach a consensus on this, which fortunately I don't think is so frequent. #3: I am not aware of too many issues involving locking tool and we don't see too many accounts being unlocked. When they are unlocked is usually because some Steward thought it was a spambot, but it is not or thought it could be a sock-puppet of a locked account but they are not for instance. In my experience, this is rare as we set a high threshold for that. I understand its definition may be too wide, but - believe me - it is clear when an account needs to be locked. The locking process is completely different from a global ban. When we consider a global ban, we are thinking about an user that still is productive in certain fields, but has done incorrect things in many projects, as long as those "incorrect things" aren't serious violations of local/global rules, like vandalism, spam or any criminal act. Also, global ban can be useful when someone has done incorrect things in many wikis in a specific area. For instance, if someone holds checkuser permission and it is defined that they misused the tools, it may be considered to apply a global ban preventing that person to hold advanced rights, specially if there is no sign that this was done in bad faith. So, the editor can keep helping in other areas and locking would be too much. Of course, there may be cases when a global ban decision requires an account to be locked, but that decision comes the community that decided to remove all access to that account/person. Apart from that, Stewards can help on the global ban discussion as mediators or with clerking tasks, but shouldn't decide on it with steward 'hat'.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 14:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In regards to question 1: Invalidating consensus is not something that should be done lightly. It needs, in my opinion, a very good reason to do. One of those reasons could sockpuppeting or new users influencing the local election. Another one could be cases such as the arzwiki cases you named in your question. There a group of stewards collectively decided, after an investigation, that policies were not followed and in some cases obstruction. A new request cannot in cases like that overturn an investigation and previous discussion of stewards.
  • In regards to question 3: An user that could be eligible should not always neccesarily be locked. Locks are meant for use when local blocks would not be sufficient (enough) for abuse from an account. Global bans are usually for people shown to be problematic on multiple projects, but where their behaviour does not meet the standards for a lock. In that case a community dicussion could still decide to ban the person and subsequently lock their account. --Wiki13 (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1: it would be based on consensus, and based on what was previously established and whether voters are locally active or not.
  • 3: It seems to me that locks are there to stop the further spreading of disruption, i.e. if it's likely that it will continue to spread or if the problems were localized and so not likely to go elsewhere. Global bans is when a specific person is known to keep up long-term, global disruption, for a situation which is more permanent than a lock (although the latter is more technical, whereas bans more community-based). ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please focus on community volunteers not WMF staff[edit]

I would like for volunteer stewards to avoid collaborating with paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. Paid staff and volunteers have different priorities, and I would like people in the steward role to direct their time and attention to volunteers. If paid WMF staff need something, then stewards should avoid the conversation and instead direct WMF staff into the broader Wikimedia community for collaboration elsewhere.

Briefly - if you mostly agree with this, then just say something like "Yes stewards should focus on Wikimedia volunteer needs and not on those of paid staff." Of course there are exceptions. If you have a significant objection to this then I would like to hear about that.

context

I have the perception that employees of the WMF treat stewards as the Wikimedia Community's elected leaders on matters of multisite, multilingual, multicultural ethics, policy, and technical changes. My question for candidates is this: if paid staff of the WMF ever ask stewards to comment on issues, can you please direct that staff person to post their issue in public on the wiki rather than having private conversation about it? Also in general, can you please try to avoid talking with WMF staff?

I want to elect stewards who look to the Wikimedia community for service and support, and who keep a healthy distance between what paid WMF staff do and the values which the Wikimedia community has for itself. The Wikimedia Community elects stewards to support community volunteers at the request of other volunteers, and the steward role does not exist to provide volunteer consultation to paid staff. Any time spent in the service of paid staff and consultants is time taken away from peer to peer volunteer support, and I want stewards who can commit to the volunteer community. If there are reasons why the WMF needs stewards then the WMF should do the labor of documenting what they need, including reports of how much and why they contact stewards.

In my view, these steward roles are supposed to be low work, low stress, but highly trustworthy administrative tasks including janitorial cleanup and basic maintenance. This is supposed to be support by and for volunteers. I have huge respect for stewards and I want to show that respect by giving stewards support to stay to their roles, and to defer complicated controversies and discussions to the broader on-wiki community. I think that we should strive to make the steward role independent and that there should be no need for WMF paid staff and volunteer stewards to share responsibility or commitments. If WMF staff need labor and support then they should recruit that support somewhere else, and not from Wikimedia Community stewards who already have community-defined roles and responsibilities.

I totally support WMF staff collaborating with community members but the institution of the Wikimedia Steward is by and for community volunteers and needs to remain that way.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Bluerasberry: I don't think this is a "Questions" to be answered. This place is to be used for asking "answerable" question, not collecting people's opinion. Please rephrase to be a question. — regards, Revi 06:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can you try to avoid talking with WMF staff? y/n no need for explanation Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:41, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: Not a steward or a candidate, but I am not sure what exactly you're looking for. The answer should be no if I'm not mistaken, because stewards do work with WLF on various issues. Or am I missing something? Leaderboard (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Leaderboard: I want the attention of stewards to be on volunteers and not paid staff. I have the perception that the WMF uses stewards for free labor and to by-pass Wikimedia community discussion and community processes.
I feel like stewards would be in a better position if they avoided talking with WMF staff and instead turned their attention to volunteers.
If in fact it is not possible to be a steward without talking with WMF staff then perhaps the WMF should document the relationship to be more transparent about why this is.
Whatever the case, my question for individuals is whether they can do their steward roles with almost zero WMF staff contact. If WMF staff have a request they can post it publicly, stewards can read, and no need for stewards to talk with them. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Bluerasberry, there are several situations in which stewards and WMF staff need to co-ordinate that involve either non-public information covered under the privacy policy, or which involve information that, by community consensus, is inappropriate for onwiki discussion. Two examples I can think of are resolving issues involving (temporarily) insecure accounts, and global blocking of banned users/accounts/socks. There are probably others; these are two that I'm aware of even though I am neither a steward nor a candidate. Risker (talk) 18:34, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Risker: The steward role has a purpose other than being a source of free labor to WMF staff each of whom consume ~US$100,000/year. If WMF staff rely on the services of stewards then they can either pay stewards or create a new paid role and leave stewards alone to do activities by and for other volunteers. It is okay to be a steward and volunteer time for the Wikimedia community instead of volunteering time for paid staff of the WMF. I want stewards to feel free to collaborate with Wikimedia community volunteers.
If the WMF feels really strongly that they need access to stewards then they should allocate a recurring annual budget for stewards to spend on themselves in their own way to have independent discussion and define themselves. There is no public record of the WMF ever giving a budget to stewards to empower their own priorities, yet seemingly the WMF has designed critical infrastructure with high value (US$millions, US$ tens of millions?) around the steward role. I asked the question because I want to support stewards to be free to advocate for themselves and for volunteers, and not to feel the pressure to take orders from paid staff. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see where you're coming from @Bluerasberry:, and while you do raise a valid point, I don't think it's fit for a stewards election. I think you should file a Meta Request for Comment instead. Leaderboard (talk) 19:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be absolutely clear from my end, no I can't avoid WMF contact. For the record, I do contact the WMF for their consultation on matters more than they consult me on matters by far if that helps alleviate concerns. That said, it's also across all my roles involving English Wikipedia CU/OS (and that mailing list), ACC, UTRS, Ombuds (up until I depart), and other generic concerns that I have that involve private information. It's not something I can promise. Stewards would add another reason to need to contact them, especially about signatures on the ANPIP/N. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 00:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, this is not something I can promise. Though my focus will be on the communities, discussions with the WMF are sometimes a part of that community focus. --DannyS712 (talk) 03:11, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the question. I understand your point, I guess, but I do not believe that "having contact" and "working for" are closely related. Besides that, Risker and AmandaNP already said some areas where this contact is necessary, so your demand, even though is an interesting debate, is not something I can take on as a candidate today, sorry. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 17:33, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think I understand where your concern is originating from, Bluerasberry. To me, the word steward means someone who cares for others' interests. To the global community, a Steward is someone elected to serve the global community's interests and facilitate the various independent projects. I believe that also means the Stewards are one of the points of contact for the WMF. This does not mean, however, that I think the Stewards should act as the WMF's errand runners, or hand down edicts, etc. Quite the opposite, in fact. I would have been elected to represent the projects, not the WMF. I would not avoid communication because communicating would be key to fulfilling my role as a Steward. Operator873talkconnect 23:12, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not realistic. While we don't work for WMF staff, there are circumstances where we need to communicate with them. But I agree with your interpretation of the philosophy, we exist to serve the communities first and foremost. --Charitwo (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, Bluerasberry. I get your point, but I don't think you are proposing the best solution. At least, it deserves to be clarified. In my experience, interactions with WMF staff couldn't have been done in public as it contained private information. So, we can't ask them to do it. Actually, many of their actions - if done by a volunteer - could bring harm or any legal stress to that volunteer as we sometimes deal with legal actions, criminal acts. I don't think it responsible or fair to force volunteer community to be accountable for that and I am thankful to have WMF staff taking the lead in certain cases and protecting volunteers from possible side effects that some circumstances may bring. I understand that when there is no private information, nor legal or life harm, we should keep community accountable for the decisions. If it's that what you mean, I agree with you.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 14:35, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Teles: You take for granted that paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation have to be the masters and controllers of this confidential information that they share with you, and that only the WMF can choose what to present and how stewards should hear it. WMF also chooses what to not share with stewards.
I prefer exploring other models of how stewards do activities, and they start with a protective wall between WMF staff and volunteer stewards. WMF staff could pass on sensitive issues to third party organizations which have fewer conflicts with Wikimedia community activities than the WMF. Possible organizations could be Wikimedia chapters, university research groups, partner organizations in human rights or ethics, or anything other than WMF people who can only speak and act after confirming that the issue does not conflict with other WMF corporate priorities.
WMF paid staff are an unaccountable black box. It seems likely that they consume money in the US$100,000s to interface with Wikimedia Stewards and yet there is no reporting of this money, nor is there any budget to support and grow the steward role. This relationship where the WMF makes ethical decisions, consumes money, and does not share or account for its resource use is not in the favor of Wikimedia community members. Stewards should be conscious that any Wikimedia staff person talking to them has prepared for hours and consumed US$100 per hour for their engagement. This is not a healthy or fair relationship, and the most unhealthy part of it is the taboo in discussing how much money is tangled into the institution of the steward. When stewards got established the Wikimedia Foundation had no money. Now the WMF is on track to manage US$200,000,000 in assets with very little public talk of how to fairly oversee their interactions when they pay their staff to recruit volunteers to do activities of WMF choosing. There should be protection from stewards and some frank public discussion about shared power, responsibility, and credit.
If there must be conversation between WMF staff and stewards, then WMF should give a fund to stewards to manage some of their own administration, and also WMF should be proactive in using their paid staff to report and declare how many requests they make of stewards. The great financial power of the WMF staff and the low power sharing with stewards is alarming to me. I am sure that I prefer to vote for stewards who focus their volunteer activities on Wikimedia community members and not the requests of WMF staff. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: It sounds to me like you are demanding changes on the way that WMF acts and how they relate with Stewards and use donated money. I understand it is a fair question/demand, but I believe this is something you should bring on another venue, like a RFC, where others can weigh in. At this very moment, I am failing to understand what do you propose Stewards should do in a short term, but I am open to suggestions.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 15:20, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Teles:"I am failing to understand what do you propose Stewards should do..." - Can you try to avoid talking with WMF staff? y/n no need for explanation Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:33, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry: Yes. I can try if there is no private information, nor harm related on doing so.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 15:41, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
perfect response 👍 Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:48, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I do understand the point that is being made, I don't think it's entirely possible or realistic. Sometimes there are circumstances (namely around checkuser and oversight) where communication between stewards and WMF is needed. In the end it's something I can't promise. --Wiki13 (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WMF does tend to employ roles for specific functions, and has over the years, and depending on what they're meant to do volunteers can sometimes not fill in for certain needs (although the assigning of the staff flag has usually been a gray area). With regards to communication, generally, though, it would not be very feasible as e.g. sometimes messages need to be sent to emergency when certain diffs are encountered. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

homewiki[edit]

Usual boilerplate question: Where do you identify as your home wiki(s)? — regards, Revi 08:50, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Intervention[edit]

When do you believe that it is appropriate for stewards to intervene in local wiki affairs, or advocate on behalf of local communities? I am specifically asking about two types of scenarios:

Good questions. Personally I believe that the short answer to that is both: Yes. If stewards are not to get involved in these type of scenarios, I don't know who should have the power to do so. The only question is how they should do that. Outside of WikiWorld, I've been involved with managing other virtual communities and the problem of "subgroups going rogue" is a usual social problem when dealing with any kind of communities of the sort. The reasons for that "going rogue" part differs from community to community. In Wikipedia you're more like to find nationalism, politics and history as the main reasons for that (and for the most common edit wars) and both examples above deal with those subjects. I believe the correct way to solve that would be to write a notification on the local community asking for a halt to editing in subjects that are problematic or individuals who are deemed to be problematic, opening a discussion on Meta about the said subject, offering the users who are active on these subjects or individuals who have been involved in the subjects to discuss on the Meta discussion and taking measures against anyone who continues to get involved in the local community on the same subject while the Meta discussion is ongoing. The final results should depend on the outcome of the discussion which should ideally include the thoughts of the local community and that of many stewards.
As for the practical involvement of WMF in conduct policies and/or deployment of new technology, again stewards may play a main role by acting as a voice for the complaints of the community if such complaints exist in a major scale. Ideally, complaints should be able to pass through the local admin link of many different communities before coming to stewards but of course in different occasions, a Meta discussion could be all there is needed. Now, WMF involvement with technology is a bit more difficult as a subject because it is a given thing that communities will complain when technology is changed, whatever the community is and whatever the change was. (Even though the specific change mentioned in your example looked a bit disturbing if it was implemented without a prior notice.) As for code of conduct on the other hand, the voice should be high if such a need arises but personally I can't say more to the specific case because I don't know the details on matter. Having said all that, I do believe that WMF should have rights to take office actions like banning and desysopping in principle. It's just a matter of how these rights are used. But whatever the case, I believe stewards should play active roles in occasions like these. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:22, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Concerning that Stewards have access to tools that are usually used to solve these issues, I understand that they are the proper body to help on some of the mentioned situations when there is no way of handling it locally. It's more commonly seen on smaller to medium wikis. When things are uncontrolled, are escalating, and many local attempts failed, it's correct to create a discussion on Meta, try to find the best solution for the issues with local and broad community, like using a RfC. I don't like the idea of Stewards being the ones to bring a final decision, but I prefer them being able to help on the discussion flow, check if all sides had their voices heard, propose feasible solutions to community evaluation, and obey the consensus reached, as long as it won't lead to negative consequences. It will be always a case-by-case decision, as there are many things involved, with a special emphasis on the sovereignty of the local community, but I tend to think that those issues should be taken to Stewards and they must decide when to step in or not.
  • As for WMF intervention, I tend to think that Stewards shouldn't engage, but there might have specific situations when they could. For instance, Superprotect, Fram ban, etc, were cases that happened in large wikis, that have many grounds to deal with that. Most of the times, they could do it even better than Stewards would. So, in this kind of situation when a local community is requesting their sovereignty to be respected, I consider it is risky and contradictory to bring another external body to intervene again. It would enforce any possible claim of autonomy lost and I would avoid it. However, if a local wiki can't have their voice heard and respected and if they would like be helped by Stewards, then I think it is an obligation to try to help as a mediation group that knows global rules and procedures, where request help and so on. I don't think we would ever get to a point when a Steward would have to use one of their tools to undo a WMF staff and I am not talking about that kind of help as I believe volunteer community would be respected and any possible mistake would have been reverted, like, for instance, Superprotect was, without Steward direct interference. I see that as a sad episode, but all we can do is gain knowledge of this type of experience, understand our history and don't repeat it.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 16:12, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe the role of Steward is often a balancing act. A community should maintain their autonomy and be able to self govern until that system of governing breaks down due to abuse. I believe direct Steward involvement or intervention is a serious matter and should be viewed as something on the "last resort" side of the spectrum. However, I still do nothing Stewards should act unilaterally. If a community is suffering or has strayed away from the Pillars, a global level discussion should take place.
  • I absolutely believe Stewards can and should give feedback and guidance to the WMF when implementing or executing new policy. As I've said in response to BlueRaspberry above, I believe the role of a Steward is to care for the interests of the individual communities. As such, I think it would often be a requirement to give that feedback to the WMF.

Thank you for the questions. Operator873talkconnect 22:22, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • As per the aforementioned question about "serving the community not WMF staff", that takes precedence always and stewards should absolutely respect local autonomy and only step-in in accordance with established policy (e.g. crosswiki abuse) or in situations where a community requests assistance from a steward. Specifically using your examples, I would not act independently were action required as this seems to be a last resort type scenario, that would require a bit more discussion between other stewards input from the WMF community-at-large. Just because one is a steward does not give you cause to act on your own judgment alone in every circumstance. It's a case-by-case basis and you need to make sure that in the end, the community will not become more unbalanced by any decisions made. --Charitwo (talk) 02:27, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • WMF was absolutely wrong in the way they handled the Fram situation and unequivocally deplore their decision to wheel war by reinstating the block, given the circumstances it should have been resolved by the English Wikipedia community first. As I've said already, individual communities need their autonomy. Unless there is some legal or safety concern that could get the WMF in trouble, they need to avoid such rash actions. Full stop. Same goes for the superprotect situation, these communities need to have a say on the features used on their wiki and should have the ability allow either the entire community/individuals to opt-out or make it an opt-in feature altogether depending on community consensus. --Charitwo (talk) 02:27, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • For Concerns about wikis not following global Wikimedia norms, Stewards should act according to consensus in a global RFC and in line with relevant policies, specifically including Stewards policy. For Concerns about the WMF being too heavy-handed in the application of new conduct policies, Stewards should absolutely be able to advocate on behalf of communities, but should be careful to ensure that their advocacy does indeed align with the wishes of the communities and does not result in stewards' opinions replacing those of other community members. It is a balancing act, to help communities without replacing or overruling them. --DannyS712 (talk) 03:29, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Than you for the questions. Basically, I follow the same argumentative line that already explained by Operator873 and Teles. I would like to add that much times, the mismanagement in a community is result of abuse of a group of administrators, crats, which shielding themselves preventing any dissenting voice from being heard. When this discussion is brought to Meta in a RfC, these voices can be heard and, if the community reach that conclusion, this local "bubble of power" can be broken by stewards with desysop, for example. But of course this decision needs come from the community on RfC, and stewards should use their buttons to apply that decision. About WMF, I repeat the idea of balance and intermediation. If we have a problem between WMF and a community, WMF does something, community revert, if a steward entry on this conflict and revert or apply the problematic action, he/she will only make the situation more conflictual. Here I can connect with the previous question about contacting between WMF and stewards: by the nature of stewards work they need contact with WMF and also with communities, so stewards can act as intermediators to facilitate dialogue in these cases. If stewards have this communication capacibility, why not use to facilitate things, make discussions more direct, more productives and help everyone. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 16:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think generally stewards should not intervene in local wiki affairs, unless the circumstance asks for it. Situations like that are when wikis themselves ask the stewards to act or the self governance of a wiki fails (such as this case from arzwiki). In the end stewards are the middleground, you could see them as mediators. If there's no good reason to intervene in local affairs, they shouldn't. People who replied before me called the role of stewards a balancing act, I think this quite accurately describes their role I also think that in cases like these stewards should not act alone, but rather involving more stewards into a global discussion.
  • I believe the mentioned cases about Fram and superprotect both show a lack of communication / mismatch between the community and the WMF. As steward you tempt to have quite some communication with the WMF. I see stewards as the bridge between the community and the WMF, where valuable feedback could be given. In a conflict situation involving both the community and the WMF, I think stewards should not do any action (such as reverting an action from either party) that could make the situation worse. Should then, in my honest opinion, act as facilitors of dialogue between the both parties.

I would like to thank you for these thoughtprovoking questions. Kind regards, --Wiki13 (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Such RfCs and community discussions generally exist to form some kind of consensus about such issues, but it doesn't seem like any specific people can decide one way or another (unless consensus is obvious, then even non-admin closures can be made in the case of AfDs). Generally, though, local issues should be resolved locally, unless some global policies are coming into conflict. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll answer the main question first. If stewards want to advocate on behalf of a wiki, then they need to take their steward hat off and not officiate or use the tools in any way. That's a conflict of interest. Intervening in local wikis affairs is a very volatile action. The only time real intervention might be needed is when consensus has been distorted by mass sockpuppetry or similar issues. Other than that, communities can eventually work out what to do, even if it's not immediate. The English Wikipedia is broken and has been for years. It's the nature of an open encyclopedia. But it doesn't need the equivalent of a global ArbCom to fix it. That's what global RfCs are for. I'd be willing to provide basic instruction to help form an RfC, but I would not make it's content nor be a participant in the discussion.
In the two cases you list specifically for the English Wikipedia, it would have been even more disastrous if the stewards had of intervened. Likely it would have caused an even larger community uproar. The dispute was between the English Wikipedia and the WMF. The stewards acting as global Arbitrators would have sunk enwiki's faith in the stewards for getting involved in something that wasn't their dispute. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 10:12, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SE system[edit]

Do you think that the current steward elections system/procedure needs improvement? What and Why? -- CptViraj (talk) 08:50, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Overall, I am satisfied with how the process is done over the years. It's been more or less the same way has been a while and seems to be working, so if ain't broken, I wouldn't fix it. It allows translations, it's announced globally and gives enough time for users to participate even if they use different languages, timezones, or different activity levels. Yet, I would like to be more confident with regards with sockpuppetry on the elections. I would discuss the need for using tools like SecurePoll on the election. I don't know the tool in deep to provide any final statement, but I would like to see the pros and cons being raised and discussed with community.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 15:26, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the Election process works very well, for the most part. I hate to repeat what Teles already said, but I do think introducing Scrutineers or using SecurePoll would be a very good addition to the process in order to ensure each person in our global community who participates is able to participate once. Using alternate accounts and sockpuppets during voting can obscure the will of the communities and skew opinions. This should be prevented as much as possible. Operator873talkconnect 22:31, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • As written I think it is fine. However, I don't fully agree with the strict opposition based on criteria not defined in the written requirements for steward (e.g. lack of crosswiki activity). On the other hand, I partially agree that it is a very clear way to gauge how well you would perform as a steward, but it's still not a hard requirement, although it could be. Using my own candidacy as an example and based on some of the questions presented to me thusfar, I admittedly do not have a lot of crosswiki activity and I can see why that puts doubt in people's mind that 1) would I even do anything 2) could be trusted to do it correctly. But there are other factors involved that I went over in my statement. I've been a part of the project for almost half my life, avoided situations that raise major red flags/elephant in the room scenarios that come up with every election and I've exercised areas of trust in other ways in other aspects and positions of the project and that should count for something, but ultimately it is still up to the community whether I agree with it or not because after all if I were to be elected they are the ones I'm there to serve and their interests that come first. --Charitwo (talk) 02:47, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't think of any improvements for the system at the moment - it seems to work well --DannyS712 (talk) 03:17, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the elections are going well in the current format. Maybe we can also use MassMessage to post a message on the village pumps (CentralNotice is very nice, but other forms of disclosure are always good :) ). Rafael (stanglavine) msg 21:31, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think overall the current format works well and there aren't many things that could be changed I think. Some people suggest using SecurePoll, which could be a good idea. It would prevent canvassing or atleast make that way more difficult to do. Another one could be MassMesage as Stanglavine points out. Some wikis don't like CentralNotice and will disable the notice with CSS. MassMessage could be a non-intrusive way to still notifiy the communities in such cases. --Wiki13 (talk) 21:47, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Last year I suggested that perhaps subpages may be used here due to the questions' page singular size. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The system I think is working relatively well as is. There will always be arguments around what support percentage or what the initial requirements should be, but as long as it is reflective of a community process, it's not broken. Using SecurePoll is an immediate non-starter for me both because of the narrowing of eyes on the voting conditions (eligibility, etc) and because of reasons I don't have the ability to disclose at this time. So to echo what was said above, it's mostly a working system. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 10:01, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Next to non-existent communities[edit]

What constitutes consensus on barely alive wikis? How do you handle requests voted on by 1-3 people? Do non-voting editor actions or comments weigh in the vote? What if there is an asymetry in amount of work voters did on the project? Should local rules be considered if they were voted in by 1-3 people? Should admins be kept or desysoped if there's 1:1 or 2:2 vote to desysop? — Robert Važan (talk) 04:51, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very good question. I believe this falls on a grey area part of policies (except for policies that have a minimum threshold requirement) and it should be judged on a case by case basis. I'd like to share my personal experience in the subject. The Albanian Wikiquote project had been without any active user for 15 years. I felt bad and wanted to help on the project and therefore wanted to get admin privileges to delete old articles, update the overall site, etc. but there were no users to vote for that. What actually happened is that some users with privileges from the Albanian Wikipedia (the only Albanian active wikiproject at that time) came and voted for me and the request was accepted by the Meta Stewards. I've been helping on the site ever since and the article number has gone up from 15 to 300. Unfortunately, this situation is present in many other Albanian wikiprojects and other wikiprojects globally, I suppose. The question may be rephrased as "Do we help people who want to help these projects?" It's either that or we close the said projects. But the question may be rephrased even as "Do we trust the people who want to help these projects to really help them and not abuse anything?". Therefore I believe that the best choice would be for Stewards to get involved organically with small Wikis beforehand and know how things are going on to know how to act on these situations. Personally I come from a small Wiki so I'd take interest on "studying" the situations on other small Wikis on the global wikicommunity, help them technically, help them crystallize their communities better, have better interlanguage connections globally, etc. Or if something like this can't be done, at least the Steward handling the said request could do a little background check on the Wiki and the user/requester on his contributions. Keeping an eye on its actions the first days the change happens would be a good idea too. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:16, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, Robert Važan. It's indeed a good question. There is not a clear rule about this, but, as it is a routine for Stewards, the procedures are more or less defined by practice and tend to run smoothly. It's perfectly possible to provide admin access to a local account from a small wiki, even if the candidature had a few or no vote, as long as the voting process has minimally followed the rules, is open at least for more than a week, as long as there are no active local bureaucrat. There may be a vote that will require extension of the period so it can be better announced, and it's usually common sense to provide temporary access, instead of permanent, so it can be reassessed in a short to medium period. It's case by case. As for desysop requests, that may be more complicated. It usually may be related with a conflict on the background. If local vote can’t provide stewards with enough information, I would encourage a request for comment or other venues for discussing the specifics and get to a clearer decision.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 15:38, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello there! There is no quorum defined by global policy. There might be one for the local project though, and that would be up to the Steward who was acting on the request to research. However, as for the question at hand, I think it'd be prudent for the Steward to review the applicant of such an action and the surrounding details. Ultimately, if the project's small, yet existent, community has arrived at a consensus about a promotion, it should be done until there is a reason to reverse or not proceed, like issues with Pillars or legality problems. And as that project grows, if a problem develops there, it'd be subject to a RfC here. Operator873talkconnect 17:48, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the questions. I will try to answer them all together. It is very common that requests (for permissions) from small wikis have only three, two, one or simply no voters. In these cases stewards have some established practices for assigning these permissions according to the size of the project/number of votes (basically editors from small wikis receive temporary permissions and for less time, which requires a periodic review of this grant). The most important thing is that a request should be created on village pump or request's page on the project, so that other editors have the opportunity to give their opinion. Even if there are few editors or none, this opportunity should exist. Controversial requests or oppositions usually require a full discussion. In all of this requests stewards need to pay attention on evidences of fraud such votes from new or inactive accounts, sockpuppetry, unfortunately sometimes it happens. I tried to be succinct and I hope this answer your questions. Regards, Rafael (stanglavine) msg 18:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even if a community with no bureaucrat was small, a clear consensus with the minimum number of voters is fine as long as there is no opposition in the designated time period, in which a more involved discussion would be required per guidelines. As for situations where "asymmetry of edits" exist, if there's no already established local guidelines on this it doesn't matter what the symmetry is if they're all in agreement. --Charitwo (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Generally pre-established practices should be followed, with temporary roles used for the more sparse votes, but since MediaWiki's interface integrated the factor of time it's been easier to set these flags. ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is something I feel has been argued (and contested) at the English Wikipedia for years, just in a different form. The key takeaway is that consensus does not mean a straight up vote. It's meant to gain something around or close to a w:supermajority. So anything that is only 50% isn't going to be consensus from the start. That applies to smaller wikis with 1-3 people too. We are lucky enough to already have minimum permission requirements as I found the other day and Rafael pointed out, so those specific issues already give us even more guidance so I don't need to worry about this. In cases where there is no established practice, I would work off of the supermajority idea.
I will note you have 6 different questions here so I will only continue to answer the ones that I don't see fitting what I described above. For local policies, the validity of the local policy would be based on how the policy came about. The English Wikipedia describes this apparent conflict with what they call local consensus. Basically, a smaller group can't override a larger group of voters on a wiki. So if the policy is not established and written by one person, it can't override a vote of 3-6 people.
Do !votes count? Yes, they absolutely do in determining consensus. My reasoning is exactly as that link says. You don't always have to act right away either, you can ask for clarifications on positions. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 09:54, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert Važan Hi, ElectCom member speaking. Just a friendly reminder that one wikimedian may ask two questions per candidate only. It sounds like you're seeking answer to six things. Could you please rephrase your question to only ask two things or less? Thank you! Martin Urbanec (talk) 10:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Martin Urbanec: Sorry. I wasn't aware of the restriction and now I don't want to disrupt the conversation flow by editing the question. Candidates are free to interpret this as a single question about consensus on nearly inactive wikis. All the specific questions just illustrate this main question to make it more understandable. — Robert Važan (talk) 13:11, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus is not a vote, so I would look at what the people contributing to a discussion were saying. In the case of a split vote for permissions, if those on one side provide detailed explanations, and those on the other just "vote" without any reasoning, I would likely lean towards the contributors that gave rationales. If there is unanimous support for permissions (like adminship), but there are only a few contributors and its a small project, I would only grant the rights temporarily at first. DannyS712 (talk) 01:06, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Uniqueness[edit]

The union of the abilities of all stewards is very large, while the intersection is practically the null set. Considering that you all are versatile and would be able to perform most of the work required, what do you think you can offer as a steward that would help the Wikimedia community the most? Leaderboard (talk) 18:11, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I plan to keep helping with locks, global blocks, being there in case someone needs an oversight or a checkuser, just like I did in the "old days". There's not much uniqueness on that, as there are many skilled stewards able to perform that as well. Maybe, joining a discussion regarding a difficult case is probably something I can add to the participation of other thoughtful stewards. I know I am not the most experienced, but I believe I can help with that. I have been working in many ways on many wikis, have been through difficult conflicts in the past and learned with them. Helped with different global and local flags, including advanced rights or even in many external events, like editathons, Wikimanias, as a WMF contractor. There was a time when I went through different wikis just to learn how they deal with their issues and acquire a broader understanding of different solutions for the same wiki problems. Sometimes, I understood that things that my homewiki saw as a problem, were normal procedures on others. So, this kind of things provided me with a sense respect for local communities and procedures that I believe to be useful on Steward work. I did it at least with larger wikis like Spanish, English, Simple English Wikipedia, other non-content wikis, and all Portuguese projects. This year, I will complete 14 years of volunteer work for Wikimedia projects and I am still learning things day by day. I am very proud of that and wish to keep helping and learning with that group.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 05:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been very thorough in this answer many times now in answering other questions. Not wanting to become obnoxious to the readers, whoever may be interested, can read anyone of my other answers and find the answer to this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:16, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting question, indeed. If I set down the 'routine' work of the Stewards and think about, besides that work itself, what would be most valuable to the communities I serve, I think it would be my commitment to fairness and a neutral point of view. Topics with no clear answer being discussed by any community deserve their time of consideration beyond a 'first glance' opinion. As a Steward, any opinion stated publicly should be carefully thought out with consideration of all the facts and evidence provided. At times, the most correct answer may not always be the same as my opinion. To me, that is the most valuable trait I would offer to the the Wikimedia community. Operator873talkconnect 18:05, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for this interesting question. One thing I like and do sometimes that I think is a skill/personality trait/whatever you want to call it is to mediate. It is something that goes beyond my participation in the Wikimedia Movement and that I think I always had. A certain interest in bringing divergent ideas together, looking for a point of convergence. I intend to do several things as a steward, as I said in my statement, but if this question looks for what I can add as "special", I would say that it is a certain notion of mediation. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 18:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • What I can do to help the community the most is to be there for them. Active, approachable, and available for whatever they may need. --Charitwo (talk) 23:50, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • As there are a large amount of small wikis it seems generally more a case of tasks being shared, as opposed to more specialized roles (or schedules, as with paid roles), and so, as with most things on wikis, it's a case of whoever is interested in what, which in my case is rooting out spambot farms (although it would be better if MediaWiki had more native anti-spambot measures). ~Lofty abyss 05:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Without trying to promote myself too much, my unique skill contribution is in relation to the CheckUser tool. I've been a CheckUser since mid-2012 and have done a deep dive on both the tool and the policies around it. It's one of the reasons I put myself up to be an Ombud for 2 years. With my level of experience (and starting to help more crosswiki CUs this year) I feel what I can help teach other local CUs across all projects is both how to and when to use checkuser. I understand that I won't be using my tools directly on wikis that already have CUs, but I can still provide valuable 2nd opinions without running a direct check myself. I've also had others approach me over the past year to see if they have enough reason to justify a check, and this is valuable advice I can give. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 09:38, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would probably be able to most contribute in my anti-spambot and LTA work, where my experience with abuse filters comes in handy, as does my existing familiarity with many LTAs' editing patterns. DannyS712 (talk) 01:11, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think where I shine most is in the area related to vandalism/spam. I think this mostly due to how long I (with some small breaks in between) have been doing. I have been member of SWMT for close to 9 years at this point so I have met my fair share of LTAs in the past few years and got to know how they work and where they are likely to appear. I also see myself as a "jack of all trades", I'm willing to learn new things and that will likely not change if I become a steward. --Wiki13 (talk) 20:16, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Toxicity[edit]

Do you agree with the idea that the environments on various Wikis have grown toxic and what do you see as a stewards' role in arresting, alleviating or solving the problem—or preventing it, if that's your take? Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think, like all gatherings of humans, there are good portions, outstanding portions, and portions that could be improved. However, I believe projects are and should be self-governing. So, I would consider this an issue for the community itself to work on and relentlessly try to resolve. I would be happy to work to reach that end, but only as a community member and not in my capacity as a Steward. That said, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of the cure. We should all try to promote, by example, an environment that is nurturing to all editors. Operator873talkconnect 05:03, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think my answer above in #Intervention clearly highlights my role here and I don't wish to contradict myself trying to say it again. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 11:37, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the question. I don't think that stewards can do much things as stewards on this type of situation. Good or bad environments are result of the constitution of each project, its culture, history and relations between members. Manners to make the environment better should be discussed by the own community because it have authonomy to solve their own problems, and stewards shouldn't act in local problems if community can do this by themself. Maybe some punctual situations like abuse of tools, but outside this I don't see much space for steward actuation here. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 14:37, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the question. In my experience this is not something a steward can do something about most of the time. I believe this has to do with the fact that wiki first and foremost should be autonomous and self-governing. The amount of toxicity on a wiki is dependent on stuff like cultural differences, relations between its users and local policies. Due to this stewards (or even other users from elsewhere) judge the meaning of comments. Furthermore stewards should not act locally on a wiki if the community on this wiki can do it themselves. There are however execeptions, as I could possibly see an intervention in cases of abuse of tools. --Wiki13 (talk) 20:32, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that Stewards are empowered to do things to avoid a toxic environment, just as much as any other user is. I have participated in toxic discussions and if I had known then what I know now I would have avoided a harsh word, I would have made clearer the positive interference that my comment would offer at that moment. It's not about not being offensive; it's about making it clear that you are being respectul, by saying it. I didn't do it every moment of my wiki life, and I won't say that I will always be kind. We have our moments. But that's what we all should aim and it's a recurring exercise. So, I believe we should serve as an example and, in the position of being a Steward, we will engage in difficult discussions that require being polite in addition to having wiki knowledge.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 13:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • To be honest, I don't agree with it per se. There are many wiki projects and that makes it hard to do generalizations like this. If that was indeed a phenomenon, even if Stewards intervention was possible, I strongly believe it would need to be on a case by case basis. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:54, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Future work[edit]

Greetings candidates. I just wanted to ask a standard question here: which areas of steward work do you plan to work in the most, and which areas do you think you will work in the least if elected? Thank you, --IWI (talk) 18:20, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please see my statement as I address it there. The areas I would work in the least are the ones outside of that because it's already such a wide range I'm committing to. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the question. Well, if elected I plan start where I already have more experience: countervandalism and spam (g(b)locks, SRG), renames, quick OS and CU, IRC requests. Progressively I want to start processing SRP, SRGP, SRM, OTRS queue. On the other hand, probably you rarely will see me on SRCU or SRB, no special reason, is just something that I don't wanna do so much as steward. I hope this answer your question. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 20:07, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I discussed my intent in my statement, but that leaves the other half of your question. I will likely do the least amount of work assisting with Global renaming as I have no experience there. Operator873talkconnect 00:49, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned in my statement, I intend on helping out in the areas with the greatest need, I don't really have a preferential area that I want to work on. Any job paid or volunteer you do what is needed of you not necessarily what you want to do. As for the least I would probably leave SRUC to our plentiful list of global renamers unless there was an unusual backlog but they usually have it well under control. --Charitwo (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think addressed most of this question in my answers to other questions. To summarize it: I have always been good in stuff regarding spam / vandalism (which also includes LTA's) due to my past experience. The second question is a bit tricky for me, as I have a tendency to wantinf to learn all the different aspects of stuff I come across. I probably could answer this question better some time after I have been steward, if elected. --Wiki13 (talk) 20:39, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I plan to participate more with anything that relates with oversight and checkuser tools, whether by proactively looking for spambots, LTA on wiki or IRC, or by answering requests. That usually leads to global blocking and locking. I may also help with local and global permissions. I will also try to engage more with internal affairs and discussions. I don't plan to help on pages, like bot status, nor writing abuse filters as I am not comfortable enough to deal with them. I wish, but know nothing about bots and perhaps just a little more than the basic regarding filters. For some reason, I also don't like renaming very much. So, unless there is a backlog or I receive a specific request to do it, I don't plan to help too much on renamings.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 14:04, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Greetings! :) Please see my first answer on my section. I've answered this question as thoroughly as I can and more. Of course, the presentation also helps. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WMF Bylaws Changes[edit]

What are your views on the changes to the WMF bylaws with regards to the community board members? — csc-1 04:11, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Arccosecant In my humble opinion I think it might be a good thing going forward. Especially since the board has taken actions that were not received well recently, such as Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 movement brand project. Where I do see an issue, is that the board might not be diverse in its lists of members. What I exactly mean with this is, is that we should prevent things such as too many people from one wiki (for example English Wikipedia) or only people from the bigger wiki's. Ideally it should be equally divided, so that both have an equal voice. I don't know if that this has been taken in account (from a first quick read it doesn't look like it), so that might be, as I said, one of the points of concern regarding these changes to the bylaws. Wiki13 (talk) 15:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Wiki13 Hello, one short follow-up: How do you think the seats for Board to be filled, do you think it should be directly elected? Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 11:58, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Camouflaged Mirage: I think it could be done that way, but then again, you might run into a problem there that there are not enough eligble candidates from either group. This would mean a second round and in my experience those have less exposure then if it would happen in one round. I do have to be honest: my knowledge on other voting systems is a bit lacking, so I'm probably not the one suggesting a certain way of voting to be used. I think the community as a whole has better knowledge on this subject then I ever will have, so if it comes to that: I have trust in the community. Wiki13 (talk) 11:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good enough answer for me, thanks Wiki13 Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 11:34, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry for the delay in reaching out on this. I'm not too sure what this has to do with steward duties, but i'll take a stab at it. Personally, I think the wording allows for future groups of trustees to skirt the process if they so wish to do so in the future. There may be assurances that it won't happen or that the community will still be consulted enough, but it creates way too much ambiguity for me to be comfortable with the change. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 03:41, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't usually closely follow Board matters, but that sounds like a positive change. Taking steps to make sure that [editorial] community is well represented is a good change. More important than that, is how members will be selected. I come from pt.wiki, which has always been a large wiki in numbers, but never really engaged sufficiently on those matters. There is nothing that allows me to think that it will change. It means that whatever number of seats is decided, none will be occupied by anyone that could represent us, so I am afraid it is gonna be more in numbers from the same. I hope the Board thought that through and will come up with something to fix it. So far, this change deals specifically with the workload, which is indeed something that should be dealt with and the reasonings make sense. However, this leaves aside any improvement regarding diversity, that should be thought together. It reminds me the changing of the name from Ombudsman Commission to Ombuds Commission. The changing makes sense, but... shouldn't we be talking about the elephant in the room?—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 17:23, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't answer satisfactorily because I don't follow this discussion and only reading a page certainly I don't have all the context. I saw just some discussions about this on wikimedia-l and many concerns expressed there about a possible reduction in the community representation in some moments/conjectures. I just can say - assuming those concerns as true - that I don't think that any reduction of this type can be a positive thing. Sorry but I'm limited here. Regards, Rafael (stanglavine) msg 21:59, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Stanglavine: RE: discussions about this on wikimedia-l What is wikimedia-l? Why are such important issues disccussed in a mailing list when we have open public space on-wiki for discussing all Meta issues? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 17:45, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it's a step in the right direction, however I think the number of non-board appointed trustees should still be higher. The interests of the foundation should more closely match the interests of the community, and better representation is needed for that. --Charitwo (talk) 23:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why more vandals and spammers here than other social-networking[edit]

Why are more vandals and spammers attracted to wikipedia than to other social-networking sites? Your views please. Ottawahitech (talk) 13:30, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi, Ottawahitech! Do you have any number we could use to compare? I wonder if that is something you are presuming, instead of a fact. I think there is a lot of violations happening on all social medias, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but there is no public logging of the actions to erase and prevent them, so it might be a misperception. We just don't know. Wikimedia projects are much more transparent and this work is mainly done by volunteers.
    Still, the open editing format allows anyone to change articles, which are supposed to describe facts if we are talking about Wikipedia. With what should we compare when talking about other social medias? Violations of Terms of Use? It seems to me they are different platforms and comparisons of that kind should be understood carefully.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 17:42, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi, I don't know if the statement being made is true or not, as I don't have the numbers to see if its true. What I do know from my experience is spammers are everywhere they can be. I have a few private accounts on social and even there I get requests from clear spambot accounts. The amount of vandalizing users might be higher here then anywhere else, but for me the cause of that is logical. Wikimedia and all of it's projects are free to be edited by anyone. This can be people with good intentions or bad intentions. Social media is far less open meaning that vandalism in such cases is more difficult to do, then say spamming. Spamming can happen on any platform or website where you either have the possibility to freely post stuff or where the registering process does not include measures to stop spambot registering. Kind regards, --Wiki13 (talk) 09:06, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Honestly, I think your question is misguided for steward candidates. They do deal with situations where people commit vandalism. But as I mention in the question below, stewards are here to take care of things. This consideration of a meta-type idea about why we might appear to be more vandalized is up to local communities or the WMF, and doesn't appear to be in the scope of a steward. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 08:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User rights noticeboard[edit]

Stewards have ability dealing with stupendous access to modify user rights in all wiki edition. Therefore, would you support the creation of user rights noticeboard or steward noticeboard in Wikimedia where a blocked user can still file a request to central wiki - Wikimedia - for resolving toxic admin issue related to imposing improper block to users? (for instance, my own case, that I have still been blocked without certain limit just for my unawareness of simple-renaming problem, If any would give a comment about whether I deserve to be blocked or not on this case, it would be much appreciated.) — MusenInvincible (talk) 14:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm going to be honest, no, probably not. I'm going to try explain here. Stewards usually do not intervene in local wiki affair unless there is a good reason to do so (e.g. emergency or the self-governance of wiki fails). The local community should first and foremost decide what happens to a certain user. I will not comment on your case specifically, since I do not know all the information needed to make a good judgement. Wiki13 (talk) 21:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello, MusenInvincible. I am sorry to learn that you are having negative experiences on a project. However, there is nothing any Steward can do to help. Stewards can't act on a project where there are already local users to perform the desired action. So, using Steward's rights on the mentioned case would be a mistake.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 02:56, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This would be my homewiki in the situation referred, so it wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on that. In terms of a global noticeboard where stewards deal with potential admin abuse and override a local process, I'm absolutely against it. Stewards are not meant to be a global arbitration committee. The word steward itself even back to old english where it came from indicates that we are caretakers of the wikis, not decision makers, a board or any sort of community replacement. We are just here to assist. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 08:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ka.wiki[edit]

Stewards, in general, does not intervene in local wiki affairs and problems should be solved by the local community itself. My question: what would be your approach in cases like ka.wiki (see Stewards' noticeboard/Archives/2021-01#Need Stewards Help in ka.wiki, Requests for comment/Probleme in der Georgische Wikipedia, Requests for comment/Vote of confidence on sysops and unblock for user Deu on kawiki), when me and others are concerned about sysop abuse of power, when local wiki policy doesn't allow any tools of problem solving? --M. (talk) 05:39, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For each candidate[edit]

AmandaNP[edit]

  • I guess we have to address the elephant in the room about your recent resysop of Ivanvector. Being a steward often requires strict adherence to arcane policies, especially in the areas of user permissions. What is your philosophy regarding IAR and granting/removing permissions at the steward level? --Rschen7754 02:02, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Permalink: w:Special:Permalink/1001312324#Resysop_request_(Ivanvector) because it will auto archive.
  • I don't see this as an elephant at all, and I think that's a mischarecterization. I hope everyone will take the time to not only read my reasoning for the action, but the fact that at the end of the day this was just something to note to the future. Some of the reactions including possibly taking me to ArbCom or admonishing me were overrated for the situation at hand. I have noted that people do not wish for me to take that action, and I won't do so in the future. Furthermore, this wasn't solely an application of IAR, but alongside the understanding that the English Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy.
That being said, your question implies that this thinking would translate to the duties of a steward. I've shown time and time again that I have different levels of thinking for different positions I handle. CheckUser and Oversight policies along with the Access to Non-public information policy are arcane (understood by few) policies that I follow to the letter each and every day and that translated to my role as an ombudsperson. Outside of that, ACC has it's own ruleset separate from the English Wikipedia, which is also arcane. Beyond that, meta - or the Stewards for that matter - has IAR as a guideline and not a policy, which is opposite on the English Wikipedia. With stewards, IAR is not a founding pillar of editing and therefore as it's a guideline and not a founding principle, there isn't really a place for it, the same as with my CU/OS/ACC/Ombuds work. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 06:35, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@AmandaNP: To expand on that: there are many parts of being a steward where there are no formal policies. For example, the 24 hour hold at SRP for resignations, while a convention, is not a policy. Given that, how would you approach these conventions as a steward? --Rschen7754 05:57, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am a fan of the 24 hour hold approach at SRP for resignations. I honestly wish enwiki had it as it allows people to think through what they are doing before losing their access. Tensions can get high and cause someone to post a resignation. Several times I've seen at SRP people take them back. So barring extenuating circumstances like security, I would absolutely keep the hold in place.
I know I'm not aware of every unwritten policy though, so if you wish for me to comment on another, I would be happy to. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 01:35, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@AmandaNP: To clarify - I'm asking about these customs in general rather than any specific one. --Rschen7754 23:07, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Working conventions absolutely need to be considered, and 9 times or more out of 10, be followed. The only time I really see myself invoking anything different is when something is causing a serious enough issue that it's going to make the work of others a lot more difficult or another extenuating circumstance. I think the fact that I can reassure you that I see this as a once in a blue moon occurrence is enough to address this general concern. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 09:33, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 17:55, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bizarre situations are very frequently part of the job as a sysop, as a checkuser, as an oversighter, as an arbcom member, and as an ombud. If someone tries to convince me of that, I would listen to them and hear them out to a reasonable degree. I'm sure there is some way with advanced mathematics or maybe through an error of understanding that we can come to an agreeable conclusion quickly. If not, and on the balance of all probabilities it remains unlikely, then I would leave a final comment in the conversation when it reaches that point. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 11:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi AmandaNP I read your statement several times but must admit I have no idea what you did in the past or what you hope to accomplish for the wikimedia community. I have been around wikis for many years trying to contribute to the movement by making knowledge available freely and widely to anyone, anywhere. I assume this is your mission too? Can you please explain the following terminology which you have used in your statement to a dummy like me?

Ombudsperson, CheckUser, bureaucrat, Arbitration Committee, Unblock Ticket Request System (UTRS), Request an account (ACC), blocking lock evading sockpuppets, IPBE, proxy blocks, proxy blocks, CheckUser, Oversight, IP Block exemptions and other permission request

  • when and why did you change your userID?

Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are several duplicates there, so i'll filter those out in my own list below. I'd love to explain each and everyone to you, but I'd be almost writing an essay at that point. So I'll link you to the established pages on them.
As for my username change, I renamed last June. My signature had already been changed to Amanda for a long time for personal reasons and I figured it was time to align my account name with that. I wasn't trying to evade any scrutiny at all. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 13:06, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello AmandaNP!
I'd like to inquire about how much time you'll be able to afford for the steward role. In the last two years that you were a member of the Ombuds Commission, the OmbCom was constantly pushing a backlog of around 20 cases from period to period, while resolving only 4,8,2,2 in each quarter according to reports. The last report shows 9 cases older than 6 months and 9 cases older than a staggering one year.
The complexity of OC cases pale in comparison to ArbCom cases (resolved in a few months), resolutions after more than a year are hardly understandable if not for the members' lack of time to invest. This trend only changed when a new member joined mid-term in 2020.
Could you elaborate on what has changed since OmbCom so you would have more time for the steward role and whether that will be enough to fulfill the responsibility?
Thank you, —Aron Man.🍂 edits🌾 23:08, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So this will be a very complicated answer. I will split my answer into the first and second years. In my first year that I was an Ombud, we had a very large activity problem among members. The Commission could not decide matters without a majority of the Commission voting. Beyond 1 other person, sometimes 2, we could never get the required show up at the meetings we did have to get action on items. I also wrote (as far as I remember as I'm now without access) the supermajority of motions in my first year. I tried to push the OC as much as possible to get things done, but I just couldn't do it alone.
The second year is more complicated. I wrote the supermajority of decisions in year 1, but I didn't want to be the single driving voice of the OC and just have everyone support my work as variety of opinion is needed. Beyond that, in the early spring sometime of 2020, a motion was made to change the voting requirements to allow less than the majority of members to vote to pass a motion. I strongly opposed this motion, especially since an activity policy was set to two weeks to mark someone inactive (which would have been a miracle if anyone got by that requirement in year 1). So I honestly couldn't bring myself to participate as much knowing that very few people could be making OC decisions and not enough appropriate discussion was happening, and I didn't want my name on it. I also had other philosophical differences with opinions on management of the OC than the year 2 membership.
Also, I singlehandidly managed the OC mailing list for 2 years, got a reasonably successful non-email platform for us to communicate on, and wrote the major policy clarification on information disclosure that the OC gave to checkusers in 2019.
I communicated my concerns to varying degrees from time to time inside the OC, and to the WMF. I think the OC was broken when I came on, and it's still broken to this day. I did what I could to improve it, and now the momentum is on those who are currently serving. It's the exact same reason I left ArbCom in at the end of 2018, as I had done what I could to improve it, and it needed other people to carry the next part of the torch. Where it goes from there is up to them. This is the first time though that I have really come to say any of this in public as the nature of OC work is very w:in camera. I appreciate the question, @Aron Manning:. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 15:00, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Charitwo[edit]

  • If I was a newer contributor with only a year or two experience, yes absolutely an issue. I expected a question like this, which is why I addressed it a bit in my statement. However, in this scenario, quality over quantity applies here...and having X number of edits does not speak to my ability to effectively perform as a steward. Even still allow me to play devil's advocate using your point of view. There are a couple possible concerns you could raise with your query:
Q1: "You aren't active outside of your home wikis why would you be active crosswiki as a steward?"
A1: Simply because it's the position I applied to take responsibility for, like any job I've ever worked (even volunteer work). You would not see a potential confirmation question raised next year regarding inactivity I guarantee you that.
Q2: "How can we trust you to use the tools of stewards appropriately when you have little demonstrated use of crosswiki activity which would necessitate the need for steward tools?"
A2: Having already held various positions that directly advanced the needs of our global community and having held a nearly identical role on Wikia/Fandom speaks to the necessity of experience with the tools that one would use in a position of stewardship. I plan to put that experience to work here on Wikimedia in accordance with our and guidelines and policies.
--Charitwo (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards are expected to use their tools actively, and are actively removed for not doing so. For perspective, the steward with the lowest edit count current has over 10,000 edits. Given your lack of sustained activity in over 14 years of editing (11 edits a month is certainly not sustained activity), how do we know that you will remain active as a steward? --Rschen7754 19:54, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I supposed you'd be the first person to bring up a lack of activity on my potential confirmation page given your concern here. As mentioned previously, I'd be taking on the job I was elected to do. I don't have much crosswiki activity because I'm not a steward and having crosswiki activity is not a requirement for becoming a steward (although it obviously helps)...but it would also be quite pointless to become a steward and then do absolutely nothing for the whole year. I've never let anyone down in any other role on this project and I'm not about to set myself up for failure now. --Charitwo (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • A lot of your qualifications are predicated on your work on a project that isn't even in the Wikimedia "family" but you haven't given any examples. Can you please provide links to the work you've done there? How are Wikimedia projects and Fandom/Wikia similar policy and community wise other than the open ability to edit? What access to PII have you had and can you please explain how you've demonstrated trust in this regard on Wikimedia? Can you also provide some examples of your extensive experience on Wikimedia projects of dealing with spam and anti-vandalism? Praxidicae (talk) 19:58, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately, their tools for looking up crosswiki activity are restricted, there is no public way to demonstrate cross-wiki activity there and due to issues with actor migration and merged Fandom + Gamepedia user tables global edit count is no longer available. As such, my activity is based solely on memory.
  • I meant similarity in the policies between roles (Steward vs. SOAP).
  • My role on Wikia/Fandom involved using CheckUser (to assist with crosswiki spam/vandalism and determining abuse of multiple accounts) and Oversight/RevisionDeletion (largely to hide attack names and published PII by LTAs). As for Wikimedia itself, my roles as freenode staff where I frequently directed assisted this project and then as IRC group contact involved non-public information going in both directions.
  • Experience on Wikimedia projects dealing with removing spam and vandalism are mostly on my home wikis English Wikipedia and MediaWiki.org.
--Charitwo (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps I should have clarified. Can you provide specific links to your significant contributions in the aforementioned area? Not just your general contribs which we all know how to access. Praxidicae (talk) 15:33, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Specific links to contributions in...which aforementioned area? Wikimedia? Wikia? Because you distinctly asked about both areas. Beyond where I've already explained in great detail above and in my statement. If it's the former you have ample visibility of that and if it's the latter you already have that answered in my above reply. I cannot show you what I do not have access to (if it's even still there anymore). --Charitwo (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like your application. One thing that put me off, to be honest, is your phrasing "bird owner". I love birds and I write bird content as well. But I'm not the one for birds in cages and owning a bird strikes me as disrespectful. This is not meant as an accusation, but I would liike to hear your stance on this. --Gereon K. (talk) 08:00, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I appreciate the question, I could probably write a lot here but I will try to keep it brief since it doesn't really apply to my candidacy, and I'm happy to discuss in more detail elsewhere if you'd like but when I say "bird owner" it's more of a faute de mieux. No more than speaking about having cats or dogs. My philosophy is that cages are for sleeping and transport primarily. When we are home, they are usually out of their cages and have the freedom of the upper level of our house. As such, I am also against clipping. I think the practice is barbaric and birds are meant to be able to fly. Not only because it's in their nature, but it's also their greatest defense to be able to escape from a dangerous situation quickly. --Charitwo (talk) 17:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These questions were filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm quite confused on how you managed to get sysop on mediawiki without even filing a RfA (request for adminship), given that your user rights log simply mentions "trusted user", and you've only made ~15 edits by then. From my understanding, only developers can generally get access without having to file a RfA, and I cannot find any evidence that you were (or are) a developer. Can you explain this? Leaderboard (talk) 14:44, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't recall the exact circumstances that led to me becoming a sysop there as it was over 7 years ago, all I know it was not via RfA and there are quite a few non-developer users besides myself that have sysop there that didn't get it through the RfA process either. --Charitwo (talk) 02:04, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Speaking as a mediawiki.org bureaucrat (who also regularly promotes "trusted users"), I don't think there's any question that Charitwo is a trusted member of the MediaWiki community via his participation on IRC and on Phabricator. If he asked me today for rights with a legitimate reason, I would've also summarily granted them. Legoktm (talk) 00:19, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 18:47, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would simply not entertain them. Such illogical arguments are pointless trolling and trolls are not to be fed. In the end, do what you need to do in accordance with policy and move on with your day. --Charitwo (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DannyS712[edit]

This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have basically all of the rights available to non-administrators on en.wp, but not adminship itself. Why is that? Leaderboard (talk) 09:31, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I do not have all of the rights available to non-administrators, though I'll admit I do have a few advanced ones. The reason for not being an admin is simple - I have not successfully requested adminship on the English Wikipedia according to local rules (see w:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship for the process) (that's not to say I've made an unsuccessfully request in the past - I have not filed an RFA because I have no need for the rights in order to contribute effectively) --DannyS712 (talk) 12:21, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards are technically able to carry out any sort of action on-wiki. They use that power in emergencies, or when no one can do an action locally. What constitutes an emergency? --Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:58, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think there is a clear and distinct line between "urgent non-emergency" and "emergency" - if elected I would likely defer to the judgement of other stewards or, if no other steward is around, decline to act. This would not, however, apply to wikis where global sysops are allowed to act, since stewards can act there too in non-emergency situations. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:24, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi DannyS712, are you able to explain the next abuse filter?
(action = "edit")
& (page_namespace = 2)
!& (usergroups, 'sysop', 'bot', 'confirmed', 'autoconfirmed')
!& (username = prefixedpagetitle)
!& (editsummary, "+speedy.", "Requesting [[WM:CSD|speedy deletion]]", "+delete.")
Nieuwsgierige Gebruiker (CA) 16:03, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nieuwsgierige Gebruiker: I can try, but before I do, there appear to be some syntax errors with the filter - using the "Check syntax" button in the abuse filter interface reveals Syntax error detected: Unexpected "T_OP" at character 42.. Would you be willing to ask the question with an error-free filter? Filters cannot be saved with such an error in there syntax, and if for some reason this was saved before the syntax was incorrect I'm not exactly sure what would happen. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:29, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You are an administrator on 7 non-test wikis, plus Wikidata OS, plus ACC/OTRS. Have you thought about how you will manage the added responsibilities of being a steward, especially if you have a sudden life change and your activity levels have to decrease? --Rschen7754 01:57, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    If my activity levels need to decrease, I'll simply not be around as much, but I believe I'll be able to manage the added responsibilities of being a steward even if I spend a few hours less online every day. I currently log in almost every day, usually multiple times per day, so if I had less time, I would still be able to log in once a day or at the most every few days, which would be enough to take care of a few spambots, etc. I don't anticipate any such life changes though. --DannyS712 (talk) 03:06, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let me try asking Rschen's question a different way. When you turn your attention towards Wikimedia, how will you decide whether to do steward work, WikiData OS work, programming work, enwiki SPI clerking, being an admin on the various wikis you have sysop, or the other things you do across the movement? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    When I log in, I check a few things, including my global watchlist (currently at Special:BlankPage/GlobalWatchlist, soon to be at Special:GlobalWatchlist) for recent changes on the pages I watch on all of the wikis I'm active, and my email for new wikidata OS tickets in the OTRS queue, which I get notifications for. I am not (currently) an SPI clerk, so that does not take any of my time. Wikidata OS doesn't take much time either, and while I'm not sure I can publically discuss statistics of my usage, I'd be happy to share them with you in the #wikimedia-privacy IRC channel. I also check IRC, which includes notifications for some global abuse filter hits, which I use to track spambots. The time I currently spend reporting accounts and IPs to SRG could be used instead to lock/globally block the accounts and IPs myself, and the same applies to the other time I currently spend on steward-related activities that would be replaced by steward actions. As for programming work, I find that the time I spend on coding and the time I spend onwiki (excluding writing user scripts) doesn't overlap much - they appeal to different interests, and while there is only so much time in the day I don't usually find myself pushing off one to do the other. I hope this answers your question - I generally am lucky enough to have time to do them all DannyS712 (talk) 04:09, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hey @DannyS712:, it'll be exciting if you are elected, as you claimed yourself a zh-2 skill. CU on zhwiki has always been a PITA because 1) there's a language barrier between local community and Meta Stewards and 2) the GFW keeps blocking Chinese IPs from accessing WMF projects, which leads to massive VPN/OP usage, so vandals sometimes can evade global (b)lock. My question is: how will you make use of the local CU discussion page when dealing with emerging requests? What decisions will you make when facing difficult suspects forumshopping at SRCU? Lastly, please tell me which time zone are you active in. Thank you. --Super Wang hates PC You hate, too? 09:22, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    While I currently have CU access on testwiki as a developer for testing purposes, I have no experience with actually using checkuser to handle sock puppetry and other such issues. Thus, I would likely spend some time to first get acquainted with using checkuser (in the context of steward requests and as allowed by policies) before trying to take on complicated cases like the lack of local checkusers on zhwiki and thus the high number of SRCU requests for zhwiki. If and when I do try to handle such requests, I'll review the local discussions linked from the SRCU page. I'll also point out that User language describes level 2 as "You can edit simple texts or participate in basic discussions." so I'd likely need to rely on google translate or other similar services for complicated texts like the zhwiki policies and discussions. Lastly, I would prefer to avoid disclosing my time zone for privacy reasons, but I keep odd hours, so I'm not sure it matters much (within the last 7 days I've been online in 22 of the 24 hours, on various days, and I'm changing timezones next week). DannyS712 (talk) 10:28, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now that your improper, unapproved, sketchy, and trust-destroying illegal CU bit was removed, why do you think it was fine to get CU bit from WMF (T268090) and ignore the convention of WMF not interfering with non-staff's account (excluding Office Action)? Also, given phab:T268090#6630726, and given your access to CheckUser Log was not logged, how can we be sure you did not access the CU log, which grants you unrestricted view on previous "LTA" and "spambots" which you do not have authorization to see? — regards, Revi 13:47, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    When replying, please do not say these: "I have access to system logs so I can see it anyway", "I have more restrictive NDAs". I already know that, and that is not a sufficient ground to receive CU bit, and/or perform checkuser on LTA/Spambots. — regards, Revi 13:47, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Viewing checkuserlog is problematic because it grants you passive view on what checks Stewards have performed, and thus telling you which LTA/Spambots used which IP ranges, which is something you are not allowed to know. (Response based on Special:Permalink/21009429) — regards, Revi 10:18, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe that your characterization of my access to checkuser on testwiki as a illegal CU bit is both prejudicial and faulty. As phab:T268090 shows, the request for me to have access to checkuser on testwiki originated from a WMF staffer. It followed some discussions that I had with them offwiki where we concluded that I would be better able to help with code review of patches for the checkuser extension if I were able to easily test out the relevant code by using the relevant functionality myself. I believed that the decision to have a member of the Trust&Safety team grant me the rights, rather than having them make a request at Steward requests/Global permissions for stewards to action, suggested that this was arguably an OFFICE action. If it wasn't, my apologies, but I was under the impression that it was and thus was not a violation of such a convention that you discuss.
    As for given phab:T268090#6630726, and given your access to CheckUser Log was not logged, how can we be sure you did not access the CU log, which grants you unrestricted view on previous "LTA" and "spambots" which you do not have authorization to see?, I can say that I did indeed view the checkuser log a few times, which did let me see the log of previous checks. It is a mischaracterization, however, to say that I did not have authorization to see the checkuser log - the phabricator task shows that I did not have permission to perform checks on LTAs and spambots, not that I did not have permission to view the checkuser log, even if it included such checks by others. You wrote that Viewing checkuserlog is problematic because it grants you passive view on what checks Stewards have performed, and thus telling you which LTA/Spambots used which IP ranges, which is something you are not allowed to know. - this is incorrect. I was never told that I was not allowed to know the IP addresses of different LTAs or spambots, and indeed I already can find out by looking in logstash. What I was told is that I could not use checkuser on such accounts, which is why I refrained from doing so. If it helps, I have no memory of any specific ip addresses that were checked, nor do I have any record of the logs saved.
    Why you (revi) may already know that I have access to system logs and have signed more restrictive NDAs, others may not, so let me clarify: my access to checkuser was granted only after I signed the "Trusted Volunteer Access & Confidentiality Agreement" (phab:L2), which is more restrictive that the access to nonpublic personal information agreement, which I also signed.
    Your concerns about and/or perform checkuser on LTA/Spambots can be easily addressed: I did not have permission to use checkuser on LTAs or spambots, as shown in phab:T268090, and so I did not perform any such checks, which can be confirmed at w:testwiki:Special:CheckUserLog by anyone with access.
    During the time that I had checkuser rights, I put them to effective use contributing to the development of the checkuser extension. See tickets reported: phab:T268163, phab:T268156, phab:T268155, phab:T268152, phab:T268151, phab:T268149, and phab:T268147. CheckUser access was also helpful for phab:T271195#6722172. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that the characterization of my CU access as "improper, unapproved, sketchy, and trust-destroying" was added later, in Special:Diff/21032208, and I believe that description to be likewise prejudicial and faulty, for the reasons explained above --DannyS712 (talk) 05:03, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your answer concerning adminship on the English Wikipedia is interesting but confuses me. You're normally connected on IRC, where you frequently request administrator attention to block accounts and IP addresses, or to delete material. A similar review of your edits to the Wikipedia namespace shows you nominated significant numbers of pages for deletion and reporting accounts/IP addresses to the AIV noticeboard. In light of this, and the large number of sites where you are an administrator, write me a couple of paragraphs on exactly how you don't need to be an admin to contribute effectively. Nick (talk) 19:55, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The directions above specify Candidates, please answer as briefly and simply as possible., so I'm going to decline to write multiple paragraphs here, but I'm happy to discuss it with you privately if you'd like. The short answer is that I have made all of those requests for blocks or deletions as a non-admin, and while being an admin would allow me to action the requests myself, and thus perhaps contribute more effectively, I am still able to contribute effectively without the administrator toolkit, as shown by my contributions on English Wikipedia to date. DannyS712 (talk) 00:08, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Humour me with something approaching an answer, please. Nick (talk) 11:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, but how exactly did my response not even approach answering your question? It was shorter than the multiple paragraphs requested, but I explained that I don't need to be an admin to contribute effectively because I can currently contribute effectively (i.e. without the admin toolkit). The same is true for, in my experience, all adminship candidates or potential candidates - we don't grant adminship to ineffective editors, and while the admin toolkip increases what a user is capable of, it isn't usually *necessary* for any contributor. DannyS712 (talk) 02:22, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • And secondly, do you think you could pass an RfA on English Wikipedia. If yes, explain how. If no, explain why not. Do you think your answers here should make people support or oppose your candidacy for steward, and if so, explain why. Nick (talk) 19:55, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure whether I would pass an RfA on English Wikipedia at this point. If I did, it would be because the community trusts me with the admin toolkit. If I did not pass, it would be because the community doesn't trust me. I would hope that my answers here would make people support my candidacy for steward, because I have addressed and responded to potential concerns, and I believe that my answers are sufficient to allay those concerns. DannyS712 (talk) 00:05, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    A disappointing and uninformative answer. Let's try again. If you were to self-nominate for RfA, what would you write in your nomination statement. If you were nominated by others, what do you think they would write in your nomination statements. What do you think you've done well and what do you think might generate opposition? Nick (talk) 11:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't given adminship on the English Wikipedia much thought, and this will take some time to figure out. But, @Nick would you mind explaining how your questions are relevant to stewardship elections? DannyS712 (talk) 02:25, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There are several issues, you're repeatedly claiming not to need to be an administrator on English Wikipedia (for better or for worse, the project with the most stringent/restrictive adminship process) yet you make repeated requests of the administrators there, which would suggest being an administrator there would be useful for the community, so that naturally raises a concern that you don't need to be a steward either. So, that you want to be a steward and without evidence of your ability to navigate through the more stringtent adminship requests processes on the larger Wikimedia sites, I need to see other evidence. I'm looking for evidence that you understand your own strengths and weaknesses, and that you can explain what those strengths and weaknesses are in a balanced, fair and rational manner. I'm also looking for evidence that you understand a large sub-section of the Wikimedia community, in that you can understand broadly what is likely to engender support and what will engender opposition at such a request. That is necessary due to the way in which opposing votes at the Steward Elections often lack any rationale and almost all go unchallenged, in contrast to the way in which many opposition comments at an English Wikipedia RfA will generate discussion and almost always require at least some level of explanation. If you think you can explain away what will generate support and oppose votes at your steward request instead, I'd be interested to hear that too. Nick (talk) 10:18, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    If I were to nominate myself on English Wikipedia, I would likely focus on my frequent reporting of LTAs and spambots on English Wikipedia. I would also discuss my technical experience writing user scripts since on English Wikipedia there is no community discussion needed for interface adminship (though the community can comment, the decision is up to local bureaucrats, per w:Wikipedia:Interface administrators). If I were nominated by other editors, I would expect them to focus on similar issues, perhaps also discussing things I can't speak to myself (such as whether I am trustworthy in the eyes of others). I think that my recent relative inactivity on English Wikipedia might generate opposition if I were to make an adminship request now, but I have no plans to do so, so my current relative inactivity may not be a concern if and when I ever do request adminship. DannyS712 (talk) 04:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The purpose of Wikimedia projects is to provide free knowledge to the public. Can you provide an example on a content project where you have assisted with this in a way that impacts the consumers of our content? TonyBallioni (talk) 03:35, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    For content creation, I've written a few articles on the English Wikipedia and worked significantly on a few more. I'm probably proudest of w:Chafin v. Chafin, a "Good Article" written mostly by me. Other pages I started include w:Herrera v. Wyoming, w:Azar v. Allina Health Services, and w:Carin Clauss. I've worked to promote w:Edwin Erickson, w:Nancy Pelosi, and w:Ross Perot to "Good Article" status as well, though I didn't do as much on the last 2. Outside of the English Wikipedia, I've created or proposed a number of properties of Wikidata, resulting in items that provide more information, I have proofread or validated multiple court case opinion documents on the English Wikisource (see a partial list at s:User:DannyS712), and I wrote 53 articles on the English Wikinews. Separate from that, I have been active in counter-vandalism efforts, which indirectly assists in a consumer impacting way by removing nonsense or restoring article content (though I usually didn't write that original content myself). Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 04:53, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    It depends on the context. I would probably look into why the user believes that, as well as why I believe something else. It stands to reason that I could be wrong in my belief (in math you can usually prove a claim right or wrong, but this isn't about math). If there is a language barrier between myself and the other user, it could be an error in translation (I'd probably be using google translate) so I might ask someone who speaks both languages to translate, or defer to another steward that knows the language. Without more specifics about the situation, I can't really explain more. DannyS712 (talk) 01:00, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You say that you have worked with spambots. What are spambots? Does that mean that you have been cleaning up spam that was created by bots, or that you have coded and operated bots that cleaned up spam? (Either way, spam has an evil robotic quality to it.) Robert McClenon (talk) 05:04, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Klein Muçi[edit]

  • The global Wikimedia community in narrow sense (i.e. not as a sum of local communities) is rather small a group of people and it is always great when an experienced technically competent person like yourself wants to join it more actively. That being said, unfortunately, stewards are usually people that already have experience cross-wiki and are more or less already knowledgeable about most of the aspects of what they have to deal with, rather than people who want to learn first. Have you considered joining SWMT to help to fight vandalism across small wikis, OTRS to help answer outside questions about Wikimedia projects as well as process permissions from copyright holders, or perhaps help various communities in some non-trivial way because of your technical skills, such as writing some tools, bots, suggest improvements to the gadgets or abuse filters, or simply translate global policies and pages relating to ongoing events such as requests for comment to Albanian? While helpful it is also sometimes that steward bit might not the right tool for some of the things you want to achieve, for instance in order to help some particular wikis it is better to become part of their community to some extend and possibly get elected as a temporary administrator or interface administrator to act on some internal issues proactively, rather than be a reactive responder to what the community requests as stewards mostly are. --Base (talk) 05:37, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Base and Leaderboard: thank you for the questions! I was actually thinking that this would be the first type of questions that would be addressed to me because those are exactly the reasons I've postponed setting myself up as a candidate for a Steward for around 1-2 years. Therefore, I'll try to make my answer as thorough as possible.
Even though being aware of what you suggest, I haven't tried the first 2 suggestions you mention because, as I've explained in my presentation text, I've always looked forward in dealing with the technical aspect of WikiWork. SWMT looks like a more suitable thing for me (even though OTRS is in the need for more volunteers) but it still is a bit outside of what I usually deal with even on my homewiki. Your second part of the question is what I'd be looking more forward and what I've been more involved personally. As I've said in my presentation, I've been deeply involved with citations as a concept and if you can see my Meta contributions, you'll see that I've proposed some global projects regarding the modules and bots in relation to those. Some practical examples would include: an attempt to globalize CS1, translations in regard to Internet Archive Bot in Meta, same thing + configurations on its own interface management page, a bot operating on Toolforge to help fix various citations problems, many of the active edit filters (if not all) in SqWiki/SqQuote, etc. As for practical examples of what I could contribute as a steward, I can say that first I'd have a strong inclination to see as many Forums/Village Pumps in as many projects as possible, to learn about their wiki communities better. Then I'd see technical aspects of those communities like their overall activities, their system messages, their gadgets, their edit filters and the implementations of some of the main modules like CS1, Doc etc. or main templates like various infoboxes and how up to date they are they with the big wiki's versions. Depending on the situation, I'd try either personally to help them (with or without the help of Steward tools) or help them consolidate their communities better to be able to have their own 'crats in a near future. Stronger interwiki connections between Wikipedia and its sister projects on different small communities is also a point I'd be looking forward. I'd also be willing to help in obvious copyvio problems related to multimedia in small wikis that usually go undetected either by participating personally, if the local policies allow that, or by treating it as a problem with the local communities and trying to help them deal with it. Lastly I'd also be willing to make the language barrier a bit easier to transverse by hopefully helping local communities have more multilanguage system messages and active multilingual pages like the Embassy and pages of the same sort. Different languages and different scripts make some wikiprojects dark domains that are hard to transverse globally. Everything helping in that direction, multilingual interconnections, is a good idea according to me and helps the wiki community as a whole.
As a side note, I'd say that I believe I have a really good grasp of most of the policies, noting that, unfortunately (in my opinion) most of the local policies are copypasta from EnWiki with little adaption to their local specific conditions and I spent quite some hours daily reading policies on EnWiki, their histories as to how they came to be like that and different wikiessays as well as overall Wiki history in general, not only related to Wikipedia but to other "primordial" wikis as well (Meatballs as an example), all that as entertainment. I'm aware that stewards mostly deal with electing crats and helping with vandalism problems and overall keep a low profile on everything else but personally I've always wanted that to change because I believe they have the possibility in interacting in a more organic manner with the global community (of course, without removing the autonomies of the local communities) which would be more beneficial. I've also thought of trying to be elected as a global admin or global i-admin, or even trying the more organic approach that is suggested above but in general these methods present barriers in a vicious-cycle-style-of-manner. You can't be trusted if you have no proof of your work and you can't have good proof of your work if you don't have the privileges to do the said work. Stewards are one of the only groups that allow for elections in the way they do and are more open to discussions overall. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:26, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 07:52, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Leaderboard: first of all, it depends if it is inside my area of interest or not. I don't like the "hardcore attitude" "I can take over everything and do anything". There have been times when I've been "forced" to do that, for example as an admin at SqQuote where I was literally the only person active on the project and given that the Albanian community (and the Meta one) trusted me on that, I had moral responsibility to do basically everything by myself. But, if other people are present, like it is the case with Stewards, and if the user's request was outside my area of interest, I'd help him verbalize his request to another steward or a more public place for requests like these. If it was inside my area of interest, I'd kindly explain to him that even though it may seem like 1 + 1 = 3, in the bigger schemes of the things, actually 1 + 1 = 2 and Stewards have to generally (if not always) take into account the bird's eye point of view. Another case would be if the request fell outside the local or global policies that we have, in which case, ideally, I'd be using the specific wikipages for the said policies to illustrate my words while telling him that unfortunately the rules say that 1 + 1 = 2. If the said user persisted over these methods, I'd tell him that the discussion has already been thorough and we have nothing more to discuss on the subject and if he wanted to go on, he, of course, can go and talk to another steward if he so wants. This was a very vague question and this was as much as I could answer it generally because, of course, the reaction would change on a case by case basis. All in all though, I must disclose that, I hardly believe people to have bizarre requests inside my area of interest. I've been an admin and i-admin for some years at my homewiki and while it's true that I get different requests from different users, many times even outside of the wiki, I tell them that I don't deal much with article editing itself so they can go to another admin for problems related to those (edit warring, article deletion, etc.). During all these times, I've only had 2 requests related to interface problems (one was related to some mainpage changes and one was related to the showing/hiding of categories and rendering of some error messages in regard to citations). - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:56, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lofty abyss[edit]

These questions were filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Initially I was relatively inactive, compounded by the fact I happened to miss the creation of a tool (which I've certainly never intended), with a repeat being prevented by following technical updates and being more active (which this tool makes far easier). I just hope these aren't seen as deliberate... they were as much a mistake as a misclicked block, although that usually is more immediately obvious... ~Lofty abyss 11:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Lofty abyss: If I may ask, which "tool" was that? Leaderboard (talk) 15:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was the tool enabled with $wgCheckUserCAMultiLock, so within the CU interface... very useful, but unfortunately I missed it until the end. ~Lofty abyss 16:23, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 15:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just as I handle info-en tickets, I usually research anything I have doubt about, and then respond with what I think makes most sense (if technical it usually either works or doesn't, but social sciences more subtly require context). ~Lofty abyss 16:23, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You mention activity at OTRS; how challenging tickets can be varies widely – some require a response template, some require long interactions and research. Could you provide links to a couple of the most complex tickets you have handled? Blablubbs (talk) 16:33, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Admittedly the large majority of most tickets sent are of the former kind, as that is the nature of most in the courtesy queue (and so the latter are a bit difficult to find among them), but here might be some that required some research (or a custom response, although not necessarily long interactions, in these cases): 11685485, 11134256, 10917042. ~Lofty abyss 20:42, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • To follow up from the discussion that was collapsed by ElectCom, can you explain this more clearly? You missed the fact that a new tool had been enabled in the CheckUser interface, I read. Then a mistake happened because of that? But what mistake? Or is my reading totally wrong? --MF-W 17:22, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is indeed the mistake of missing it, as it's one of the most efficient extensions for spambots mostly (and it just didn't exist when I was first elected). It is a mistake because then I ended up being relatively inactive, which wouldn't have happened with its usage... ~Lofty abyss 20:42, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Olimasy[edit]

This candidate has been disqualified for not signing Access to nonpublic personal data policy. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:21, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why do you want to be a steward, and what do you plan to work on if you become one? I do not see any such mention in your statement. Majavah (talk!) 11:44, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Olimasy and VASHGIRD: You are ready to added new informations on your nominations and answer all questions? Because there is almost 1 week before the voting starts and we are waiting for your answers as users who will vote for you. If you don't get it wrong, based on your current edits for SE2021, I don't think you've read the election rules. Regards. --Uncitoyentalk 11:56, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have very limited xwiki experience. Do you understand the cross-wiki nature of the steward role and what to work on as a steward? H78c67c (talk) 22:40, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Operator873[edit]

  • The vast majority of your edits have been to simple.wikipedia, en.wikipedia, and Meta. What would you say to those concerned that you have mostly contributed to English-speaking Wikipedia projects? --Rschen7754 20:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the question. I would say that I edit and volunteer for specialized functions (like ACC) on projects in my native language as that is where I am most comfortable. However, my crosswiki activity reveals many actions on projects in other languages. Naturally, the actions scale based on my comfort with using the language. For example, I believe you'll find my activity and log actions higher on Spanish projects than say, Ukrainian projects. The Movement, in general, is English-centric and I do feel that is an issue the community, as a whole, should strive to mitigate. That being said, the English projects are also robust enough to rarely need interactions from Stewards. So, as a Steward, I would focus my time and actions on global issues and smaller, non-English projects. Operator873talkconnect 20:47, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Stanglavine[edit]

  • Hello. You are currently the only native Portuguese-speaking sysop on Wikidata --if I am not mistaken. Do you think your election as a steward will lead to decreasing activity on Wikidata? This would be a shame. --Joalpe (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oi @Joalpe: Thank you for the question. I don't think so for basically two reasons. First, I already have crosswiki activity, so I have a time-organization between my crosswiki and local projects work which has allowed me to be an active sysop on both Wikidata and Wikipedia, besides global sysop. Second, I have a special affection for my local projects, because of this I purposely only got involved directly with two. This is my personal choice, less projects that I can look at every day. For example, I like Wikinews, Wikivoyage, I'm interested in Wikispecies and I really love Commons, but I don't participate in them because I prefer to pay attention to my home wiki(s). The short answer is I'm already an active sysop in my local projects even though I have crosswiki activity, so I don't think it will change if I become a steward, in fact I wouldn't feel good if change. Rafael (stanglavine) msg 19:59, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Teles[edit]

  • You are a currently serving member of the OC. In your statement, you said you're going to "leave those groups". What does it mean? Do you plan to resign following your appointment as a steward? If there will be a non-trivial overlap, can you say a few words about COI risk of OC members, considering stewards frequently use CU at many wikis? --Martin Urbanec (talk) 11:19, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Martin Urbanec: hi! For OC, it means I will end the current term, but won't ask for renewal. So, probably I won't be a member of OC anymore even before the ending of Steward's elections. Even if I don't pass the election, I won't be OC anymore, so I don't think there will be any overlap. Talking about COI risk of members, that's indeed something to think about. I think we can behave the same way as we do with our home wiki. Believe it or not, there are not too many cases involving abuse of Stewards. So, it's much rarer than people think. The same goes for any wiki which Checkuser body has a large number of users. Maybe because there are many users to watch themselves. In the case of Stewards, they even log it on Meta, that is highly watched. Its own routine prevents abuse. But still, being a Steward, I wouldn't participate at all of any case involving any Steward, and I would behave just like any other OC member do when there is a case involving their homewiki.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 00:42, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These questions were filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Leaderboard: Hi! I think I always used correctly the g.blocking/locking, checkusering and oversighting tools. I am not a bot guy, I know some, but I am not the best on abuse filter and don't do too many renamings. After sometime, those Stewards tasks became my routine. I started to use scripts related with Steward work and Meta was like my second homewiki. I think that with some experience, I could be more careful with private information and with the use of checkuser and oversight tools. Being a member of Ombuds commission was a good opportunity to improve this work, get to know the most common mistakes checkusers do and make sure I won't make these mistakes. For the next year, I feel like getting back from wiki vacation and like I am more excited to do it all over in a fresh mood. I still plan to use SWViewer as a Steward and being more proactive on finding issues at small wikis.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 01:11, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stewards have to often face bizarre situations to handle. Now assume that an user tries to convince you that 1 + 1 = 3. How would you respond? Mathematical skills is not the focus of this question. Leaderboard (talk) 18:07, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Leaderboard: It would depend on the tone used by the person. We usually see someone bringing a clear but honest mistake to a discussion. In case it seems that this person has good intentions, I would try to explain better no matter how easy that question may sound to me. We get in touch with people from different origins, ages. These people may have a different understanding of things that some may consider basic while having extensive knowledge about things that we don't know. Being respectful usually works for every situation; even when someone is trolling. All that a troll wants is to destabilize us emotionally in a discussion. When we respond seriously and calmly, the trolling loses its purpose. However, when it gets evident that someone is just trolling and it becomes persistent to the point of disturbing the discussion and reducing the chance of others participating in it, the situation becomes different and we are dealing with an attempt to impose a point of view. Dialogue can be attempted and it must be indicated to that person that their behavior makes it difficult for others to participate. Only if this does not resolve or in cases of clear abuse, can we address these situations with restrictive measures, such as blocks.—Teles «Talk ˱C L @ S˲» 04:24, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

VASHGIRD[edit]

This question was filed in violation of 2 Questions rule. For the ElectCom, — regards, Revi 15:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because in Tajik Wikipedia, no one has the status of a bureaucrat and interface administrator, and this makes our work very difficult for Tajik Wikipedians. It is not always easy to become a Metawiki bureaucrat.--VASHGIRD (talk) 15:42, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by "metabolic bureaucrat"? And if no one is a bureaucrat/interface admin, why not apply to be one there? Leaderboard (talk) 15:54, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because they have difficulty speaking English --VASHGIRD (talk) 02:50, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't mean that alone. I support all local Wikis, and the Tajik Wikipedia is a part of it. --VASHGIRD (talk) 02:50, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki13[edit]

  • As you mention in your candidacy statement, you ran in 2018, but unsuccessfully. Why do you think your last candidature was unsuccessful? Why do you think it will be more successful this time? Thanks for your time, --Martin Urbanec (talk) 22:28, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Martin Urbanec Thank you for the question. I think in all honesty this because of a multitude of reasons. One of those was irregular activity combined with resigning. Looking back at the period around the steward elections in 2018 I was having a hard time managing time. And that kind of showed in the activity levels. Personally I think inregular activity is a valid argument to vote no in a steward election. Furthermore there was a case back then where I had a controversial stance. Do I still stand by that comment? No. It made sense to me at that point in time. In regards to your question on why I think it will be going better: I have gotten better at managing my own time and that has helped getting into more stable activity levels over time. I hope this answers your questions. Kind regards, Wiki13 (talk) 22:48, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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